Medicine: Sugar High

In Philadelphia, for more than ten years, Mrs. Elka Abrams worked day & night to support five children. Husky, hungry Mrs. Abrams weighed 200 lb.. habitually dined on bread and potatoes, for they were cheap and filling. But not all human machines can burn such excessive quantities of starchy fuel as Elka Abrams stowed away and by the time she was 55 Mrs. Abrams was a victim of advanced diabetes. Fortnight ago, having shrunk to half her former size, she slipped into a diabetic coma, was bundled out of her house by police and rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital in a patrol wagon.

Doctors were amazed to find that Mrs. Abrams’ blood was 1.72% sugar. That ratio, they decided, came close to the world’s all-time sugar high. (Even diabetics rarely have a sugar content higher than one-half of one percent.) In a desperate attempt to rouse her from her coma, and help her liver digest a thick flood of sugar, the physicians pumped 1,000 units of insulin into Elka Abrams’ bloodstream, “enough to kill an athlete.”

Forty-eight hours later, to the physicians’ further amazement, Elka Abrams opened her eyes and, when told of her condition, exclaimed: “I swear I never touched sweets.” Regular injections of insulin, said the physicians last week, will thin down Mrs. Abrams’ honeyed blood, soon put her on her feet again.